Honoring the Legacy of Joe West

The MAE community has come together to celebrate the life and legacy of Joe West, our beloved former Laboratory Supervisory, who unexpectedly passed away at the end of June. Joe retired in 2020 after 32 years of dedicated service to Ohio State - 30 of those years spent at MAE, where he was the heart of the electronics lab and a trusted mentor to countless students.

Click here to learn more about Joe's legacy. 

Click here or see the video above for details on the ME capstone class ME2900, which shows the air motor. This was Joe's brainchild as he designed and built the first prototype air motors. He truly did it all.

MAE faculty and alumni have come together to establish the Joe West Memorial Fund, a fund that will support the MAE electronics lab in several ways. The fund will support a physical memorialization (portrait, plaque acknowledging Joe’s decades of contribution to teaching, mentorship, and training of undergraduate and graduate students, curriculum development and support of faculty research), undergraduate and graduate student internships/assistantships in the MAE electronics lab, and the acquisition and maintenance of equipment in the electronics lab, ensuring it remains a vital resource for generations to come.

Our goal is to endow this fund, creating a lasting legacy that reflects Joe's caring spirit. We invite our community- faculty, alumni, colleagues, and friends- to join us in preserving Joe's impact and supporting the future of the MAE electronics lab.